It’s (Always) Complicated

If you’ve spent any time with teenagers, or have teenagers of your own, much of this book will be familiar territory for you. She looks deeply at online spaces such as Facebook, MySpace and Snapchat. She talks about texting and Instagram.

We know this stuff.

But the book is worth reading because Boyd looks past what we think we know. She has interviewed a lot of kids and looked beyond the headlines into uncovering statistics and root causes of things.

Some people might be offended by this book since Boyd delves deeply into topics such as cyberbullying, inequality and online sexual predation, often rejecting conventional wisdom and the knee jerk political reactions we see around these topics. She doesn’t in any way dismiss any of these topics, but she does tell us that all is not as it might seem at first glance. These topics, well, they’re complicated and require some time and honesty to understand.

If you work with teens, I’d add this book to your list. It might give you another window into their lives and we all need that.